Seasickness
by DulceRuinum
Summary: He dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands, squeezed his eyes shut, and counted to ten, until he didn't feel so much like destroying anything anymore. One-sided Nico/Percy. Written after HoH, set during HoH.


He woke up on top of the sail-mast. It was the third night in a row that he'd fallen asleep up there. Nico Di Angelo rubbed the sleep from his eyes and yawned. It was yet still dark; there was no one on deck below him – not even that old satyr. This time was Nico's domain. A time for quiet, for thought, for a measure of peace.

The children of Hades throughout history had been both feared and given a certain grudging respect. He knew that the other demigods were afraid of him. And most of the time, Nico didn't mind. But it did get lonely sometimes. And Nico would admit, if only to himself, that there had been moments where he had craved for human companionship and ached for acceptance. These moments had grown more and more frequent, especially since he had lost Bianca. Especially since Percy Jackson had fallen through the temple floor down to Tartarus.

Percy.

Pleasure and pain rolled into two syllables.

They had offered him Percy's cabin. He hadn't accepted. He didn't think he could bear to sleep in Percy's bed, to wear Percy's clothes, to take Percy's place. It would be as if Nico had replaced him, as if they'd given up on Percy and resigned themselves to the fact that he would never come back.

Therefore, it would be strange if anyone found him there, in Percy's former living quarters. Nico would rather not have to explain himself to them. But it was cold on his solitary post, and it was nighttime. No one would see him go inside. And moreover, he couldn't deny his own curiousity.

It was wrong, surely, a breach of privacy, but he wanted to see the interior of Percy's bedroom. He wanted to know whether Percy made his bed when he got up in the morning. He wanted to know whether he kept chocolate on his bedside table. He wanted to know everything about Percy, wanted to know him better than anyone apart from Annabeth.

Nico slid down from the sail-mast as fast as he could, not minding the splinters digging into his palms. Upon landing, he made his way across the empty ship to the door of Percy's cabin. He tried it. It was unlocked. Percy must have left in a hurry; either that or he was extremely trusting. The latter was more than slightly conceivable.

The inside of the cabin smelled like salt and water and sunshine. He closed the door behind him, and turned the lock with a click. He didn't want to be interrupted. He didn't bother to turn on the lights – the light of the moon that flowed through the window was enough. Besides, Nico had spent nearly six months of his life in the underworld, and darkness was second nature to him. Nevertheless he found himself drawing closer to the window, and pressing his hands to the icy pane of glass.

Percy had a view facing the sea, he realized. But of course he did – Percy loved the sea, whereas Nico hated his own father's domain. It always smelled like death, and whenever he came back after a stint in the underworld, that smell would linger on his skin for days.

Water condensed into white droplets on the window, outlining his hands. He took them away, but then leaned forward to exhale the glass and draw a heart in the condensation like some sentimental lovesick girl. He quickly wiped it off and stepped away.

And found himself facing the bedside table. It was as cluttered as Nico had thought it would be. There were candy wrappers and rolled up socks and in the middle of it all, a picture frame. No longer really in control of his own body, he knelt down so that his face was level with it, pushing other things aside to get a better look.

There was a crack running diagonally halfway across the frame, but the picture inside was undamaged. And there was Percy, his arm around the shoulders of a girl with curly blonde hair and grey eyes. There were smiling at the camera, they looked happy, and Nico hated and loved and was so completely furious with them at that moment. He felt the sudden urge to stand up and smash the picture to smithereens. To watch that crack branch out and spread until all that was left of the picture and its frame was a pile of broken glass and a crumpled up ball of paper.

But he didn't. He though he deserved a little credit for that at least.

He dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands, squeezed his eyes shut, and counted to ten, until he didn't feel so much like destroying anything anymore. Then he sat himself down on the bed, unlaced his boots, and flung himself down on the blankets. He lay on his back and stared up at the ceiling, the same ceiling that Percy must have woken up to every morning, and perhaps on sleepless nights, stared up at, just like Nico was doing. Nico wondered what Percy might have thought about during those nights. And when that grew unbearable, he rolled over and buried his face into Percy's pillow.

The pillowcase smelled like Percy too, but in a different way. It was the scent of his favorite shampoo and his aftershave and his sweat. With his eyes closed, he could almost imagine that Percy was right beside him. It felt strange, to be so close to him, and yet so far away.

How many days had it been? Five days maybe. A week, at the most. It felt like longer. Already, the gap left behind by Percy and Annabeth among the other demigods was beginning to close. It made Nico wanted to scream. Did they not feel their friends' loss? Did they even care?

In the logical part buried deep inside him, Nico knew that he was being unfair. They did care – he could see it in Piper's sad smile, in Frank's dark moods, in Jason's eyes. Only not as much as he did. Never as much as Nico cared. They had lost two friends, Nico had lost a friend and a… What was Percy to him anyway? More than a friend, but not a lover.

Percy was tanned skin, windswept hair, and sea-green eyes. He was slightly crooked teeth and loud abrasive laughter. He wasn't perfect, and that was okay, because perfect things tended to make Nico suspicious. The Lotus Hotel had seemed perfect, and it had trapped Nico and his sister from the outside world for seventy years. Olympus was beautiful, but the gods themselves were often cruel.

He pulled knees up against his chest and curled himself into a tiny ball, hugging the pillow length-wise against his chest. He opened his eyes and gazed over at the picture of Percy and Annabeth on the bedside table. They were still smiling and they still looked happy, but this time Nico wasn't angry anymore. Not at Percy, not even at Annabeth.

He could feel his heart thudding a steady beat against his chest. It hurt, and probably wouldn't stop hurting as long as he lived. Nico had reconciled himself to that, but he still felt like crying. He'd lost Percy a long time ago, had lost him before he ever met him. But losing him a second time had opened an old wound. Percy was gone, as good as dead. He wasn't ever going to see Percy again.

Nico breathed in deeply, his nose pressed into the rough fabric of the pillow, and wondered how long it would be before even the scent would be gone. He let his imagination drift, reshaping history so that it told a story of a world where Bianca didn't die.

Reshaping a reality in which there were no gods, no demigods, no monsters.

Reshaping the picture on the table so that Percy's arm was slung over a younger boy with pale skin and dark hair.


End file.
